This live recording of Alessandro Scarlatti's Cecilian Vespers comes close to being that rare find: an illumination of a previously concealed masterpiece. This music for the Vespers service of the Feast of St. Cecilia (November 22) was first performed in Rome in 1721. Like Bach in several of his larger pieces, the aged Scarlatti brought preexisting and new music together into a new and ambitious ground plan. But the music survived only in fragments. Reassembled by a Swiss scholar, the Vespers music had its modern premiere ...
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This live recording of Alessandro Scarlatti's Cecilian Vespers comes close to being that rare find: an illumination of a previously concealed masterpiece. This music for the Vespers service of the Feast of St. Cecilia (November 22) was first performed in Rome in 1721. Like Bach in several of his larger pieces, the aged Scarlatti brought preexisting and new music together into a new and ambitious ground plan. But the music survived only in fragments. Reassembled by a Swiss scholar, the Vespers music had its modern premiere in 1970 and has languished largely ignored by recording companies. Now we know we've all been missing a great deal. Scarlatti's music here doesn't sound much like Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, or any other familiar choral repertory of the early eighteenth century. He tends to use, and use inventively, individual or grouped soloists in impressively spacious, varied concerto-like structures, with the chorus sometimes fulfilling the role of the ritornello or refrain. His responses to the texts...
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